Month: September 2018

Look who finally made the cover of TIME Magazine

by digby

By the way:

Boehner was on the cover of both Time and Newsweek right after the 2010 election, before he ever picked up a gavel. https://t.co/9dxf6bvVnL

— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) September 6, 2018

1994:

2006:

That year, Pelosi the San Francisco liberal became the first Speaker of the House.

She has been the most powerful female politician in America for 14 years.

I’m sure there’s nothing to see here.

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Beltway Belshazzar
by Tom Sullivan

Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt. Public domain.

There are no reports of disembodied hands writing on White House walls. Perhaps they would have to be writing on television screens with sharpies to attract notice. Nonetheless, the message from pollsters is sinking in at the White House and among the Republican congress that they have been weighed and found wanting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is already lowering expectations for his party’s performance in the fall elections, saying only, “I hope when the smoke clears, we’ll still have a majority,” meaning in the Senate. Conventional wisdom has long suggested the GOP’s prospects for holding the House are slim to none. The Washington Post records one Republican strategist’s assessment of his team’s fall campaign as a “shipwreck.”

The GOP is rushing financial aid to Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas whose Republican seat was once thought safe. Now Cruz is under threat from a surging Beto O’Roarke who has awakened a Democratic Party somnolent in Texas for what seems a generation. The sitting president who dubbed Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” now boasts he’s planning a rally to support him in the largest Texas-sized venue he can find.

The Post also reports that in conservative Indiana, where incumbent Democrat Sen. Joe Donnelly looked vulnerable, he has opened up a slight lead against his GOP challenger Mike Braun. Real Clear Politics’ polling average shows Donnelly up 3.8 points.

In West Virginia, incumbent Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin enjoys a lead nearly 5 points wider than Donnelly’s.

Belshazzar himself isn’t helping much. His numbers continue to sag, writes Paul Waldman at Plum Line:

Trump’s popularity is falling, just at the worst time. A round of recent polls has shown Trump’s approval dipping below 40 percent: Quinnipiac at 38, CNN at 36, NPR-Marist at 39. There are many possible contributing factors, such as the multiple former Trump aides headed to jail, the ongoing Russia investigation, the growing realization that Trump hasn’t in fact drained the swamp, and the revelations of behind-the-scenes chaos in the White House. Every point that Trump falls is another push away from Republicans in the fall.

Trump’s trade wars are not playing so well in the Midwest where Trump did so well in November 2016. Farmers and automakers are uneasy:

“Every way we are looking at the data, the same general pattern is emerging,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. “The Midwest is an area that is getting restless about what they hoped was going to occur and what they feel is not occurring.”

Jennifer Rubin observes that should Democrats take control of the House in January, they had best have an agenda ready to go even if Senate Republicans retain the numbers to sustain a Trump veto. If Democrats regain the Senate, they might start by passing Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s anti-corruption bill, among others Rubin lists. She may be premature about the Senate, but Vox reports House Democrats are already ahead of her:

One specific legislative package has emerged, largely crafted and sponsored by the chair of the Democracy Reform Task Force, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD). The agenda — recently formalized by a House resolution — is designed to rein in the influence of money and lobbying in Washington, expand voting rights in the United States, and increase public financing of campaigns. Democrats are prepping a final version of a bill to be ready to go if they are in charge by January 2019.

“I think it needs to be [first], and I’m sure it will be a top priority of ours,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “I’m hoping that it’s the first or second bill this fall. It’s just that important.”

Restoring faith in government needs to be a top priority, but so does delivering gains people feel in their daily lives: stabilizing the health care exchanges, raising the minimum wage, securing their jobs, etc. House Democrats will have the majority’s power to begin doing their own writing on the White House walls by exercising investigative powers. But they if they hope to retain power, they need to deliver for constituents. And quickly.

“You guys know who Paul Manafort is?”
“I don’t.”
“How about Robert Mueller?”
“Nope.”@jacobsoboroff went about as far north as you can go to Maine’s second congressional district to talk to voters ahead of the November midterm elections. pic.twitter.com/zsKIiZbcfK— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 11, 2018

The lobster boat crew may not be representative of Maine, but they’re not ignorant. They’re busy. It’s easy for us political geeks to forget. If Democrats and progressives want their full attention, they have to materially improve working people’s lives.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

A former Trump executive asks the right question

by digby

Barbara Res wonders the same thing I wonder. What in the hell are all these Trump former staffers so afraid of? Why won’t any of them except Omarosa stand up and be counted?

On this particular day, the architect had come to Donald Trump’s office to show him what the interior of the residential elevator cabs would look like.

Trump looked at the panels where the buttons you push to reach a floor were located. He noticed that next to each number were some little dots.

“What’s this?” Trump asked.

“Braille,” the architect replied.

Trump told the architect to take it off, get rid of it.

“We can’t,” the architect said, “It’s the law.”

“Get rid of the (expletive) braille. No blind people are going to live in Trump Tower. Just do it,” Trump yelled back, calling him weak.

The more the architect protested, the angrier Trump got. Donald liked to pick on this guy. As a general rule, Trump thought architects and engineers were weak as compared to construction people. And he loved to torment weak people.

But did he think the architect would remove the Braille from the panels? Never.

I had seen him do this kind of thing before and would again. He would say whatever came into his head. Ordering an underling to do something that was impossible gave Trump the opportunity to castigate a subordinate and also blame him for anything that “went wrong” in connection with the unperformed order later. A Trump-style win-win.

Trump did this with outrageous or just plain stupid ideas, both legal and illegal. Sometimes those lines were blurred.
[…]
Trump is really not all that different now, but the stakes are higher. And there aren’t many order refusers anymore either. Off the record, staffers tell reporters that Trump is out of control.

But what have they done to try to control him? Steal a memo off his desk so he will forget to sign it?

How about not preparing the memo in the first place? And who refuses to lie for him when he makes his outrageous claims?

They are not saying something silly like Princess Diana is buying an apartment in Trump Tower; they are misleading and deceiving the American public on matters of great importance.

The “just do its” are getting done. And they are not directed at carpenters and painters or fan magazines. Now they’re about alienating allies, cozying up to dictators and employing dangerous nonsensical economic tactics.

The self-aggrandizing Anonymous wants the world to know that there are adults in the room. Really? What the hell are they doing?

They are dancing as fast as they can to salvage their own reputations without ever taking the slightest risk that Trump or his mob of deplorables will turn on them.

There have been decades of academic studies about how a government turns authoritarian, wondering how it can be that so many people would just go along until it’s too late. We’re watching it happen right now. Trump is such a dolt that he will likely not be able to deliver unless he re-elected. But the new generation of GOPers that Trump is empowering — DeSantis, Meadows, Jordan, Tom Cotton etc — are learning how to be fascist in America. They will be a lot better at it than Trump is.

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Pardon me, Daddy

by digby

Donald Trump Jr. said Tuesday he is not afraid of going to jail as the result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“I’m not because I know what I did, and I’m not worried about any of that,” the president’s eldest son said during an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to create something, I mean, we’ve seen that happen with everything. But, again, I’m not.”

Don Jr will not see the inside of a federal jail cell. But as a top executive of the Trump Organization, he should probably be a little less arrogant. The state of New York has jurisdiction over many of his company’s business dealings. And there’s nothing Daddy can do to help him out of that.

His creepy brother should probably STFU too:

ERIC TRUMP attacks Democrats: "Anti-law enforcement, high taxes, and elimination of plastic straws is not a message that will win in November."

ERIC TRUMP then dismisses WOODWARD book as "sensational nonsense" he wrote "to make 3 extra shekels." pic.twitter.com/GuTXMpPLHG— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 12, 2018

Also:

Eric Trump ‘Charity’ Spent $880K at Family-Owned Golf Resorts

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Sexual abuse is now officially a conservative movement value

by digby

These people all thought Judge Roy Moore was a good guy too:

A handful of conservative groups are joining an effort to elect Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), a member of the House Freedom Caucus and fierce ally of President Trump, as House speaker or minority leader after the November elections, Politico reported Wednesday.

These groups have rallied around Jordan despite multiple former Ohio State University wrestlers, who Jordan coached, accusing him of ignoring the team doctor’s systematic sexual abuse. The groups include Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, the Conservative Leadership Fund, Tea Party Patriots, and For America, according to the Politico report.

Per Politico, “more than 1,000 conservatives” apparently support Jordan enough to appear at an upcoming Sept. 26 rally in support of his bid for the speakership.

Clearly, Republicans have no problem with powerful men abusing and assaulting women and young girls. Look at the president and the aforementioned Moore. But Jordan is credibly accused of knowing about and turning a blind eye to a male doctor who sexually harassed dozens of male athletes. Obviously, sexual abuse is bad no matter who does it and to whom but public exposure of a Republican associated with gay activity of any kind used to be a deal breaker for the hard core right-wingers. (They’ve always been fine with it as long as the pol was able to stay in the closet.) Today, anything goes as long as they are loyal to Dear Leader and are willing to win by any means necessary.

It’s a weird kind of progress that they are now as willing to ignore gay sexual abuse as they are to ignore straight sexual abuse but I think that might be missing the point.

Jordan, by the way, is a guy who will eagerly start locking up Democrats if he gets the chance. He really is that bad. The worst of the worst. He makes Newt Gingrich look like a statesman. No redeeming qualities whatsoever.

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More evidence that Kavanaugh is a professional character assassin

by digby

This is the last man who should be on the highest court in the land:

During the lengthy investigation that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, the Office of the Independent Counsel (OIC), led by Kenneth Starr, leaked non-public information — including grand jury information whose release was allegedly illegal—to a stable of selected journalists, some of whom were identified by the OIC as “confidential informants.”

One of the OIC officials tasked to provide this non-public information — designed, in part, to smear Bill and Hillary Clinton — was Brett Kavanaugh, an accomplished Republican political operative whom Donald Trump has nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

During the spring of 1997, I received an offer of a $100,000 advance from a conservative publisher, Regnery Publishing, to research and write a book about the controversial death of Vincent Foster, President Clinton’s deputy White House counsel. Regnery, which wanted a real crime reporter with good contacts in the law-enforcement community, gave me an end-of-the-year deadline.

In December 1997 I completed my manuscript, concluding that Foster had committed suicide. My book described a group of right-wing propagandists, posing as nonpartisan authors and journalists, who had maliciously attempted to portray Foster’s death as a murder — presumably arranged, enabled, and covered up by Bill and Hillary Clinton.

That same month, I heard that Kenneth Starr and the OIC, which was investigating the Clintons, were preparing to release a report about Foster’s death just before the publication of my book. Because I didn’t want my work to be dead-on-arrival after the release of that report, I went to the OIC to make sure that my book would be timely, as well as fair and accurate. Years earlier the OIC had released a report confirming that Foster had committed suicide, but Starr had since reopened that investigation.

At the time, Starr employed two top deputies: Hickman Ewing and Jackie Bennett.

On December 10, 1997, I spoke with Ewing, who told me that the OIC provided non-public information on an off-the-record basis to certain reporters — if the OIC knew where they were “coming from” and Ken Starr personally approved of them. He noted that the OIC had spoken to two of the writers who had published conspiracy-mongering anti-Clinton books on Foster’s death.

At the time, all Ewing knew about me — a pro-police, politically liberal crime reporter — was that Regnery was my publisher, which apparently qualified me for his time and attention. Ewing drew whatever conclusions he wanted from that information.

Ewing specifically offered to introduce me to Brett Kavanaugh, a young attorney who would supposedly supply me with the information I needed.

By the second week of January 1998, I had not heard back from Ewing. Concerned that I had lingering problems with the OIC due to an earlier conflict with Starr, I sought an introduction to Starr’s other deputy, Jackie Bennett.

On January 12, 1998, I spoke with Bennett who also knew me only as a Regnery author. When Bennett specifically asked me if I was looking for “substantive information,” I replied that I was not. Yet, he offered it to me anyway — as indicated in the following exchange in which I asked for an introduction to Kenneth Starr:

Moldea: I wanted to come and pay my respects to the independent counsel — and spend, maybe, twenty minutes with him, asking him a few questions.

Bennett: Okay. That’s really why I was calling. I talked to Judge Starr about this. And the question I had was, sort of, the ground rules: that this is just, you know, coming by as a courtesy. It’s . . .

Moldea: It’s to pay — It’s a respect call.

Bennett: It’s not looking for substantive information?..

Moldea: No.

Bennett: …Because if you are, then there are other people who really are better to talk to.

Moldea: Well, I’d like—What I’m hoping is that I can come by and see him, pay my respects to him, show him some things, and then, hopefully, he can lay hands on me and then lead me to the people with the more substantive material. I figured if I can—if I can win him over, then he would introduce me to the people who could give me the more substantive information.

Bennett: Okay, here is my thinking: If you make this request to really get access to substantive informationcontingent on meeting with [Starr] first, it’ll make it more difficult, because his schedule is more difficult. He travels a lot. What we can do is make the substantive person or people available to you earlier, and then . . .

Moldea: That would be fine.

Bennett: . . . And we — we’re not trying to stage manage this.

Moldea: No, no, no. That’s fine. That’s fine. Please, stage manage it. Yeah.

Bennett: But we have — the people who are most hands-on on this really have better knowledge than Ken does.

Moldea: Yeah. Oh, I’m sure that’s true. Yeah.

Bennett: And, if that’s what you’re looking for, I think that’s an easier thing to manage. And you can meet with him later. And it’ll be . . .

Moldea: That’s fine. That will be fine.

Bennett: Okay, let me—Let me make some calls for you. . . .

Shortly thereafter, I received a call from Brett Kavanaugh during which we arranged a meeting at the Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House on January 19, 1998.

Notably, I taped my on-the-record conversations with Ewing and Bennett. However, my conversation with Kavanaugh was off the record, and I have kept that conversation off the record for the past 20 years.

Just hours after my meeting with Kavanaugh, the Monica Lewinsky story broke, provoking an avalanche of news about the scandal.

On February 6, 1998, the President’s attorney, David Kendall, filed a complaint with Ken Starr, alleging that the OIC was violating federal law by illegally leaking non-public information to the media in an effort “to pressure, manipulate, and intimidate witnesses and possible witnesses, affect public opinion in your favor, and cause political harm to the President.”

That same day, Starr denied the charges.

During my 44 years as a crime reporter, I have learned from experience that prosecutors who leak have weak cases and are trying to recruit those journalists receiving their leaks as shills for their investigations, expecting those reporters to feed the prosecutors with information from their own sources.

There is a lot more at the link and I urge you to click over to the National Memo and read it.

Kavanaugh is the worst Supreme Court choice in history. Seriously. The man is a political hack and a character assassin. Of course he would be installed on the court by the worst president in history.

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He can’t stop

by digby

He just can’t …

“I hope for everybody’s sake…that FEMA has learned their lesson that the president has learned his lesson and he goes to these states not to throw paper towels, not to point fingers…but to do his job.”

– San Juan Mayor @CarmenYulinCruz tells @HallieJackson pic.twitter.com/KjJ7sSHmCN

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 12, 2018

Trump’s worst character flaw

Remember when people used to think businessmen should run the government?

by digby

They were always wrong and this proves it:

“I think I could beat Trump” in an election, the Wall Street executive said at an event Wednesday morning that was supposed to celebrate his firm’s philanthropy. “I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is.”

By noon, the bank sent out a statement from its chairman and chief executive officer backtracking completely: “I should not have said it. I’m not running for president. Proves I wouldn’t make a good politician. I get frustrated because I want all sides to come together to help solve big problems.”

Dimon is renowned for speaking bluntly, but he vacillates on Trump.

After the inauguration, he said Trump had reawakened “animal spirits” in the U.S. Dimon has also praised the president’s softer regulation and a tax policy that’s generous to rich companies and people.

Dimon was a member of the president’s strategy and policy forum — a council of U.S. business leaders — but it disbanded last year in the backlash to Trump’s response to a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And this year, Dimon said the administration’s policy of separating children from parents at the U.S. border with Mexico was cruel.

Dimon has taken shots at others in Washington without swiftly reversing himself. In 2015, he said he doubts U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a critic of large banks, “fully understands” the global financial system.

Trump has had his own ups and downs with the financial world, even though he’s surrounded himself with some of its leaders. He campaigned as someone who would stand up to the industry, and his closing ad flashed a Wall Street sign, Federal Reserve logos, and the New York Stock Exchange over eerie music and a speech.

“It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class,” he said, “stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations.”

When previously disavowing any intent of running for the U.S. presidency, Dimon has said he’s not sure being a corporate leader translates well into the political arena. His bravado landed him in trouble on Wednesday.

“And by the way, this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money,” Dimon said before apologizing. “It wasn’t a gift from daddy.”

Honestly, I don’t see much of a difference between them. Dimon is probably smarter (who isn’t?) but he’s obviously got the same character flaws.

Maybe one upside to Trump is that we can throw him in the face of anyone who even thinks of telling us that the government should be run like a business.

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Unnatural disaster
by Tom Sullivan

Call them the “working homeless,” a term now a thing in this “low-wage/high-rent society.” Matthew Desmond profiles the struggles of the working poor in a major report for the New York Times. Lack of jobs is not the problem, but lack of jobs that pay enough to live on.

Productivity has increased 77 percent since 1973. And hourly pay? Twelve percent. If the federal minimum wage had kept pace, it would be over $20 an hour. Instead, it sits at $7.25, poverty level:

American workers are being shut out of the profits they are helping to generate. The decline of unions is a big reason. During the 20th century, inequality in America decreased when unionization increased, but economic transformations and political attacks have crippled organized labor, emboldening corporate interests and disempowering the rank and file. This imbalanced economy explains why America’s poverty rate has remained consistent over the past several decades, even as per capita welfare spending has increased. It’s not that safety-net programs don’t help; on the contrary, they lift millions of families above the poverty line each year. But one of the most effective antipoverty solutions is a decent-paying job, and those have become scarce for people like Vanessa. Today, 41.7 million laborers — nearly a third of the American work force — earn less than $12 an hour, and almost none of their employers offer health insurance.

A popular narrative for explaining the lack of social mobility is belief that the poor deserve their lot. They are lazy. They lack ambition. The attitude is social Darwinism from people who loathe Darwin. The poor lack the gene for entrepreneurship. If they are unwilling to work and take risks, let nature take its course.

But most of the poor do work. They just cannot live on what it pays:

Americans often assume that the poor do not work. According to a 2016 survey conducted by the American Enterprise Institute, nearly two-thirds of respondents did not think most poor people held a steady job; in reality, that year a majority of nondisabled working-age adults were part of the labor force. Slightly over one-third of respondents in the survey believed that most welfare recipients would prefer to stay on welfare rather than earn a living. These sorts of assumptions about the poor are an American phenomenon. A 2013 study by the sociologist Ofer Sharone found that unemployed workers in the United States blame themselves, while unemployed workers in Israel blame the hiring system. When Americans see a homeless man cocooned in blankets, we often wonder how he failed. When the French see the same man, they wonder how the state failed him.

If you believe that people are poor because they are not working, then the solution is not to make work pay but to make the poor work — to force them to clock in somewhere, anywhere, and log as many hours as they can. But consider Vanessa. Her story is emblematic of a larger problem: the fact that millions of Americans work with little hope of finding security and comfort. In recent decades, America has witnessed the rise of bad jobs offering low pay, no benefits and little certainty. When it comes to poverty, a willingness to work is not the problem, and work itself is no longer the solution.

This is not “just the way things are.” People make choices, and not just the poor. The economic system we created — invented, honed, and nurtured — was designed by and for the people who use money to make money. It is working very well for them, and they have no interest in helping those lower on the economic ladder climb it. Matt Taibbi wrote of two Americas in “Griftopia,”one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land … the government is something to be avoided.” For the grifter class, government is “a tool for making money.” Exhibit A: our Grifter-in-Chief.

Perhaps the two biggest obstacles to reducing the shameful rate of poverty in this “greatest country on earth” is a warped mindset that says the poor are responsible for their poverty, and an economy designed and run to benefit the sharks who ensure they stay there. This is not a boat accident. “Anything we can create we can reinvent,” says Gabriella Lemus, president of Progressive Caucus.

The problem is getting there from here. Time to re-post this video from 2015.

Make that three obstacles. Problems identified. Solutions proposed. But the issue with videos progressives produce to promote change, Anat Shenker-Osorio (@anatosaurus) wrote in a Facebook post yesterday is failure to communicate:

Fed Ex is in the business of wage slavery and sells us beautiful tomorrows. Elizabeth Warren is in the business of beautiful tomorrows and sells us algebra homework. Aka “boy have I got a problem for you.” One of these sells the brownie. The other sells the recipe at the back of the cardboard box.

Here’s the message from Fed-Ex Shenker-Osorio cited:

We’re too busy showing off how smart we are to communicate effectively. We’re fighting for change with our creativity tied behind our backs. People suffer for it.

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